fancy they commonly regard artists of all kinds as a sort of harmless
eccentrics, and that literary people they look upon as something droll, as
weak and soft, as not quite right. I believed that this particular group,
indeed, was rather abler to conceive of me as a rational person than most
others, but I knew that if even they had expected me to be as reasonable
as themselves they would not have been greatly disappointed if I were not;
and it seemed to me that I had put myself wrong with them in imparting to
the Altrurian that romantic impression that we hold labor in honor here. I
had really thought so, but I could not say so now, and I wished to
retrieve myself somehow. I wished to show that I was a practical man, too,
and so I made answer: "What is the cause of the working-man's discontent?
It is very simple: the walking delegate."



IV

I suppose I could not have fairly claimed any great originality for my
notion that the walking delegate was the cause of the labor troubles: he
is regularly assigned as the reason of a strike in the newspapers, and is
reprobated for his evil agency by the editors, who do not fail to read the
working-men many solemn lessons and fervently warn them against him, as
soon as the strike begins to go wrong--as it nearly always does. I
understand from them that the walking delegate is an irresponsible tyrant,
who emerges from the mystery that habitually hides him and from time to
time orders a strike in mere rancor of spirit and plenitude of power, and
then leaves the working-men and their families to suffer the consequences,
while he goes off somewhere and rolls in the lap of luxury, careless of
the misery he has created. Between his debauches of vicious idleness and
his accesses of baleful activity he is employed in poisoning the mind of